4,000 kilometers west of Beijing, close to the Chinese border with Kirgizia and Tajikistan, the clocks tick differently. People in the western Chinese city of Kashgar live hours behind local Beijing – when people in Beijing are getting ready for bed, people in Kashgar are just sitting down for dinner. Yet there is only one time zone for the whole of China. Last Saturday when people in Beijing were getting ready for bed and people in Kashgar were getting ready for dinner, news reports were broadcast:

"On Saturday at 11 pm in Kashgar two criminals stabbed a truck driver before hijacking his truck and driving it into a crowd. They then exited the vehicle, stabbed six people with knives and injured 28 others. The crowd was able to subdue the two attackers and one of them was killed."

Just a day later, men with knives attacked pedestrians on the street. Police shot two of the attackers. Around 15 people died in Kashgar on that weekend. The province’s party leader, Zhang Chun Xian, spoke of acts of terrorism, saying, "this dirty terrorism is a danger to the stability of society, to the people and to the people’s property."

Tension

What Zhang, a Han Chinese like all provincial party leaders, did not say is that all attackers were Uighurs who had apparently targeted Han Chinese. Ethnic tension heats up and results in violence time and time again between ethnic Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese in the province of Xinjiang. Two years ago, Uighurs went on a murder spree in the streets of the province’s capital, Urumqi. Han Chinese responded by hounding Muslims. At least 200 people were killed in the unrest. Asgar Can of the World Uyghur Congress in Munich believes it was probably more than 200 people. He believes "the situation has gotten worse. It is much worse now than two years ago."

Leading up to the recent attacks, the Uighurs have started feeling more and more like a minority in their own land. Shortly after the People’s Republic was founded, Beijing stationed large military units it its wild west. China’s large-scale economic reforms in the 1980s opened up the doors to waves of Han Chinese immigrating to the region. Now the capital city Urumqi is dominated by Han Chinese who have decided to reconstruct Kashgar.

'Loss of culture'

Excavation work has been going on in Kashgar's historical town for two years now. Once a major commercial city along the historical Silk Road, city officials have decided that the old clay houses are no longer earthquake-proof. But the Uighurs secretly believe that the old town is being rebuilt because the soldiers are afraid of what could be hiding in the labyrinth-style grid of the old, small and winding passageways.

Ilham Tohti teaches at the Beijing Language and Culture University and is watching what is happening in Xinjiang with great concern. "Our culture is slowly being destroyed. Many of us know that but we are afraid to talk about it. We know that it will lead to ethnic conflict sooner or later," he adds.

Beijing is pumping billions of yuan into its resource-rich northwestern province in the hope that economic growth will appease the Uighurs. But Tohti says the money does not end up with the Uighurs. "All the lucrative jobs are done by Han Chinese," he says. People working at reception desks in large hotels or as ticket collectors in trains travelling to Kashgar are usually also Han Chinese. That means that people tend to speak Chinese instead of the Uighur language in public places. Tohti points out that when Uighurs speak Chinese and pronounce something wrong, people make fun of them because the Han do not respect the Uighurs. "But who’s fault is the poor schooling? It is the government's."

In Kashgar most of the Uighurs and Chinese live in separate worlds. Friendships between members of the two ethnic groups are rare. They live in separate parts of town, shop in different stores, and eat at different restaurants. A Chinese taxi driver says that’s just how it goes. "We stick to our own kind. There is a wall deep in our hearts," he explains.

'Ting bu dong'

Religion is not the only aspect that divides the two ethnicities. The Uighurs belong to a Turkic ethnic group and are related to the peoples of Asia Minor and Central Asia. They use the Arabic script and speak their own Turkic language which is similar to Uzbek. One Uighur says, "I don’t like speaking Chinese because the Chinese always say 'ting bu dong' when I tell them something. They tell me they don’t understand me and that I cannot speak Chinese properly. My brother is afraid to speak Chinese – he does not have enough self-confidence."

Such things upset the Uighurs but most would not go so far as to use violence. Another Uighur says, "it was wrong, what the terrorists did. I can understand that the government is worried. This used to be a very peaceful place to live. We are simple people who want to live in peace. We don’t like violence."

After the latest attacks in Kashgar, many of the city’s shops and restaurants are closed as military personnel patrol the streets. Chinese propaganda has spread the news that last weekend’s attacks were carried out by terrorists who had been trained in Pakistan in the use of guns and explosives. It does not add up, then, that they used knives in the attacks.

Ilham Tohti does not believe that radical terrorist organizations like al Qaeda have penetrated Xinjiang. "A radical form of Islam will never be the solution for us. If we, who are such a small minority as it is, allow ourselves to be misused by such groups, it would only give the government more reason to suppress us. Ultimately, we would suffer the consequences," he says.

Author: Frank Hohmann / sb
Editor: Arun Chowdhury